


Shorthand

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 11:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Do you remember me?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shorthand

**Author's Note:**

> We all know how the movie ends, right?

When Stacker finally finds Mako again, she doesn’t look like the terrified child in a blue coat from the hours and days after Onibaba. At the site, the pilot told him to strap her in with him on the flight back to the Shatterdome because she was too small to be held securely in an adult-sized seat, and after that, Mako refused to be separated. She slept in the chair next to him in the infirmary while they waited for the tests to come back on Tamsin; she waited outside the examination room when it was Stacker’s turn, with the door propped open a little so that she could hear his voice talking to the doctors and technicians. She ate off his plate in the canteen; she followed at his heels if he didn’t have her in his arms. The first Japanese phrase Stacker learns to say with anything resembling accuracy is _I promise. I’ll come back._

The Mako he collects a year after that is — different. Taller, neatly dressed, quiet, apparently entirely self-reliant to a fault. She has a bag holding all of her belongings, and she is neatly dressed in a white blouse and black pants. She sees Stacker come into the room, and her face flushes. She won’t look him in the eye, even when Stacker bends down so they can see each others’ faces. 

_Do you remember me?_ he asks.

Yes, she says.

 _I promised I’d come back,_ Stacker says, gently as he knows how to. _Do you want to come with me?_

_Yes. Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. Pentecost._

Stacker blinks at the phrasing, and glances over at the attendant who is going to help with the final paperwork, but she looks unconcerned: Stacker but figures that it’s a nuance of Japanese language or culture that he is missed, and Mako appears to be completely self-reliant, self-possessed, quiet, polite. They get room service, and Stacker tells her to order whatever she wants. She looks at him, blinking. Stacker tells her to order for him, too. _Your Japanese is better,_ and before Mako can stop herself, she giggles. She looks to make sure he isn’t angry, and Stacker smiles at her. She smiles back, a little hesitantly, more broadly when she sees he really isn’t upset. 

The suite has two bedrooms, and that night, Mako has a nightmare. Stacker had been sleeping with his door open, and he hears her sob: Stacker moves into the training he had in adopting a kaiju orphan. He can handle this; he follows the protocol of keeping Mako from injuring herself and talking to her, telling her it’s all right, calling her name, but not doing anything more. 

When her eyes open and he sees that she recognizes him, he tells her it’s all right. She’s safe. He doesn’t ask her specific questions about what she saw, and he tells her that he is going to bring her a glass of water: is that all right? She nods. 

Before Stacker comes back, he takes a moment to look at himself in the bathroom mirror — bags under his eyes, the overhead lighting making him look older and more tired, he sees that Mako has become hysterical with minimal noise: she has a fist jammed into her mouth and is biting down on it hard enough to break the skin, and her chest is heaving. She is rocking back and forth on the bed, and Stacker moves by instinct, rather than training. He drops the glass of water on the floor; he crosses the room in two strides, and he puts his arms around Mako. He pulls her fist out of her mouth. Suddenly, it’s as though he has uncorked a bottle. In rapid, terrified Japanese that Stacker barely understands after months of intensive tutoring, Mako wails that she is sorry, she didn’t mean to wake him, she is so sorry, please don’t send her back. She didn’t mean to have a nightmare. 

The anger Stacker feels at that moment towards the orphanage, towards Mako’s father’s family who took her, then changed their minds and took her back, at himself, for being so stupid, for taking so long to find her, for not pushing harder to adopt her more quickly — it punches through the numb fog that he has been drifting through since leaving active Jaeger duty. 

Mako cries herself to sleep in his arms. They go through a period where Mako can’t bear to let him out of her sight, but doesn’t want to embarrass him or act like a child. They develop a shorthand. Before he has to leave her with someone else or go into a meeting, Stacker will touch Mako’s back between her shoulder blades, and Mako will look him in the eyes and nod. 

The touch means: _I’ll never leave you._

The nod means: _I believe you._

…

Years later, what choice do they have? Stacker says to Mako: _you’ll always find me in the Drift_ , and half an hour later, Mako sits on an escape pod that bobs up and down on the waves. She holds Raleigh in her arms. She sobs, over and over, _Don’t leave me._


End file.
